Passing The Night Stars
by The Wandering Pen
Summary: Hiko tells Kenshin more about the constellations than he ever wanted to know on a cold night early in his apprenticeship.


Passing the Night Stars

As winter approached, Hiko and his new student were slowly getting to know each other. Kenshin was often quiet and generally serious, without the boisterousness that Hiko associated with his own younger days. Of course, he hadn't had the tragedies in early life that Kenshin had apparently had. He couldn't get the boy to say much, only those spare sentences about the parents dying of cholera and being sold to slavers. Hiko had guessed from the boy's declared age and small size that he likely had never had enough to eat, even if he did come from small people. He'd seen the boy in various stages of undress in the last month or so, and there was no meat on the bones at all, although he had a fair amount of youthful muscle. Kenshin had also let drop that the slavers had worked them as they traveled from one market to another, planting or weeding rice, picking tea leaves, fixing roads, or doing whatever kind of work slaves could do.

In the first week, Kenshin had done little more than eat and sleep, and between letting the boy's hands and spirit heal and figuring out just how, exactly, to teach the principles of the sword to a peasant child, Hiko had been content to let him do so. Once the lessons started, Hiko had been pleasantly surprised with the boy's athleticism and determination to learn. Nightmares were occasionally still a problem. It was hard to get Kenshin to go to sleep when the boy was terrified of waking up terrified. And now there was this. As the weather turned colder, the small fire in the cabin's fireplace wasn't enough and the boy just couldn't shiver himself to sleep. He had no fat for insulation and no muscle mass to generate much heat and it took forever for him to drop off. He'd been looking hollow-eyed all week, and the lack of sleep was making him clumsy.

When he stepped out into the yard, where Hiko was sitting on his log drinking sake and watching the sky, the sword master was hardly surprised. Kenshin had wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and stood on one sandaled foot; the other foot, bare, was tucked against his calf to keep it warm. The effect was of a rather scrawny, woe-begotten crane.

"Aren't you asleep yet?" Hiko asked.

"N-n-no, Shisho. I'm t-t-too c-c-cold." Kenshin sounded exhausted and miserable as he teeth clicked together over the reply.

"Well, if you're going to be awake, you might as well learn something. Come here." Hiko flicked back his cloak, opening a place on the log.

Sitting on the log, Kenshin's feet barely reached the ground, but he hitched them up under the blanket, tucking his knees under his chin and wrapping his arms around his shins.

"This is a perfect night for star gazing," Hiko said. "It's a new moon, so there's no light to dim them. You can see every star in the sky tonight." He gestured at the sky and Kenshin dutifully looked up. The stars looked closer to the ground than usual, bright and sharp enough to cut. "What do you know about stars and star patterns?"

Kenshin shrugged under his blanket. "Not much. The pole star doesn't move…it's there, I think," he said straightening and pointing. He would have lost his balance if Hiko hadn't placed a steadying hand on his back. "And those are the mitsu boshi." His finger moved to point to three almost equidistant stars that formed a short ascending line. To a Westerner, they would be known as the belt of Orion, but neither Kenshin nor Hiko knew anything about Western astronomy.

"And what do you know about them?"

"The one in the center is like the balance in a scale. The one on the right is millet; the one on the left is rice. When rice is lower in the fall, it's time to harvest the rice and plant millet. When millet goes lower in the spring, it's time to harvest the millet and plant the rice." Kenshin said it as a kind of chant, and Hiko suspected it was something learned at his father's knee.

"Spoken like a true farmer's son," he said, approvingly. "You should always remember to show respect to farmers and artisans. They are the real Japan. Far more important than daimyo or samurai, although you won't ever hear those two groups admit it.

"Now, those three stars have many images and stories associated with them, and many have something to do with farming. Another farming image that you'll appreciate it that they look like a three-pronged plow, with that cluster of stars to the lower left representing the handle. Some people say that image is a story brought from China."

"If the cluster is a handle, wouldn't the prongs be upside-down? How can you plow with it upside-down?"

Trust a farmer's son to think of something like that. "Maybe it's not in use right now. Or maybe because the Chinese are a bit backward, it's hard to say."

"They are?" Kenshin looked at him with wide violet eyes.

Hiko sighed. The child really was far too literal in his thinking. "I was making a joke, Baka," he said.

"Oh." Kenshin drew himself smaller within his blanket again, and Hiko sighed again, mentally this time. The slightest criticism seemed to bring out the cringing slave in the boy. What a strange dichotomy of spirit he had; bold enough to want to take on the bandits by himself, determined enough to dig graves for all the dead, and yet a harsh tone or a poorly chosen word would set him cowering. And what a task Hiko had in front of him to instill enough confidence to balance Kenshin's natural desire to help and protect against the possibility of self-righteousness and arrogance. It wasn't the physical task of teaching swordsmanship that Hiko struggled with; it was finding this fine line for nurturing the boy's spirit.

'Why couldn't he have been a normal boy, all full of noise and pranks?' Hiko thought, but he knew the answer. He'd seen hundreds of normal boys in his wanderings. None of them had a ki that shone as bright as this boy's did. Although it was dulled now, and Hiko knew he had to distract his student. He'd already realized Kenshin had a tendency to brood. He cleared his throat.

"As I was saying, there are other images associated with the mitsu boshi. Many trades people see items of their trade: weavers see the three prongs of a weaving machine, bamboo growers see bamboo joints, and people who design buildings and structures see instruments the measure distances. If you look above and below them, you see other stars that are the waki boshi. With the mitsu boshi in the middle, they form a tsuzumi…"

"Which stars are waki boshi?" Kenshin interrupted. "There are so many…"

Hiko set his sake cup on the log and using his right hand to point and his left to mash Kenshin's head against his right arm, he pointed out the stars he meant, the ones that made trapezoidal shapes above and below the three stars he'd already pointed out. "Look down the length of my arm – that one and that one make the top of the drum, that one and that one make the bottom." He let go of Kenshin's head and picked up the sake cup with his left hand, still using the right to point with. "And the three in the middle are the cords that tighten the strings that run from the top drum head to the bottom one."

The edge of the cloak flopped over Kenshin's head, completely covering him. Kenshin sagged momentarily against Hiko's side, and then straightened and pushed the material over to his shoulder, still peering up at the sky. It was much warmer under the master's cloak and he was trying to look attentive so Hiko wouldn't notice the cloak over him and take it away.

"Another musical instrument associated with these stars is the set of striking blocks used at religious ceremonies or in noh or kabuki plays. You may hear them referred to as _Kanatsuki no Ryowaki Boshi, _which is a reflection of striking both sides of the blocks to make the desired noise. As you know, in a religious context, this gets the attention of the kami so that you can give thanks, make a petition, or whatever. In plays, it's used to punctuate whatever is going on in the play. It's also used to start sporting events, like sumo wrestling."

Kenshin yawned, remembering at the last minute to cover his mouth so the spirits wouldn't get in. He'd never seen a play or a sporting event and couldn't really relate to those examples.

"Hey, you're not supposed to yawn in the middle of instruction. Pay attention," Hiko said.

"Gomennasai, Shisho."

"In some areas of the country when those stars reach zenith, they're known as kimono sleeve stars, since they resemble the sleeve of a woman's kimono when her arm is outstretched." Hiko sketched the roughly rectangular shape of the star pattern and Kenshin leaned against his master's side to avoid getting knocked in the head by the gesturing arm.

"Now if you look up there to heike boshi at the top, it looks a bit red. That's the color of the Taira family. Genji boshi, down at the bottom looks white, and it's the color of the Minamoto family. These two families fought a war for supremacy in ruling Japan…"

As Hiko droned on, Kenshin slowly sagged against his side, eyes drooping shut. After several attempts to stay awake, he finally gave in to sleep. Hiko, whose voice had grown softer and more monotone as he talked, finally stopped. Kenshin slept on, undisturbed by the silence.

"It's about time you dropped off. I've gone and talked myself dry." He took a sip of sake and looked down at his student, acknowledging a growing affection. "You are so stubborn."

Despite his best efforts, knowing what was to come, the kid was worming his way into Hiko's heart. Not that he'd ever let Kenshin know. But from the moment he'd seen all the graves, he'd known that this boy was special, and closer association was proving his instinct was true.

Hiko sipped more sake. In a little while, he'd return the boy to his futon and build up the fire before finding his own bed. For now, it was enough to watch the turning stars and enjoy his sake, with his student tucked against his side under the cloak of the Hiten Mitsurugi masters like a hatchling under the wing of the great dragon.

A/N: _This one takes place before "Special", but I guess you can figure that out. It took a bit of work, but I hope you like it. If I've made mistakes in spelling or stories or whatever, please accept my apologies. "Passing the Night Stars" refers to those constellations that are very visible and easily recognized. I found such a wealth of information about Orion that I stuck with that one rather than try to explain all the various ones that might have been visible that night. And if he'd had to tell all the stories there are about Orion, Hiko would have talked his jug dry._

_Vocabulary:_

_Shisho – master_

_Mitsu boshi – three stars_

_Daimyo – samurai lord_

_Baka – idiot_

_Waki boshi – corner edge stars_

_Tsuzumi – Japanese drum_

_Noh – old style Japanese theater_

_Kabuki – traditional Japanese drama_

_Kanatsuki no Ryowaki Boshi – striking both sides stars_

_Kami - spirits_

_Gomennasai – I'm sorry_

_Heike boshi – Betelgeuse_

_Genji boshi – Rigel_

_Hiten Mitsurugi – the style of swordsmanship Hiko is teaching Kenshin_


End file.
